


Holy

by objectlesson



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Body Worship, Canon Compliant, Chub Worship, Established Relationship, F/F, Girl Direction, Light Angst, Light BDSM, Post-Hiatus, Pube Worship, Smoking, Sub Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 09:02:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15167255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: She deserves not to be so goddamned put together all the time. Being in the world’s biggest and highest exposure girlband means she's never seen without a flat stomach, a spray tan, contouring, eyelash extensions, the whole of her body inescapably toned and plucked and waxed so frequently she genuinely forgot what fucking color her own pubes are. Louis wants to eat burgers and smoke weed and be twenty three. She wants to wake up with Harry and spend the whole day in bed fingering each other because they finally don’t have to have goddamn acrylic nails for once. She wants to grow her pubes out. She wants to lounge around in a posh, red-velvet High Hefner robe.Or, Louis is dressed like a fucking queen, Harry's begging please.





	Holy

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my goodness. I have to blame my entire Girl Direction group chat for this (you guys know who you are!!!) but especially Kaleigh/Lesbian AU, who said she wanted a girl direction based off of King Princess's excellent song Holy. This turned into a lot of other things, too, mostly a meditation on what the hiatus might have looked like if 1D was a girlband and not a boyband. As a result, there's some light angst, and talk about body insecurity, beauty routines, weight loss (and gain), dieting etc. They're presented in a critical light and in the past tense, but still might be triggering if you're very sensitive to that sort of subject matter! This is my first canon girl direction, I hope it works for you all. 
> 
> Thank you Jen/Hurdy Gurdy as always <3

Honey, on your knees when you look at me

I'm dressed like a fucking queen and you're begging, "please"

I rule with the velvet tongue

And my dress undone

And I'll get you lost but I'm having fun

Holy, holy, holy, yeah

—King Princess, “Holy” 

Louis buys herself a posh, red velvet, Hugh Hefner robe when One Direction announces their hiatus. It’s not a designer robe or anything, just the cheesiest, coziest-looking thing that she could find online and have overnighted to one of her and Harry’s LA houses. An Amazon box was waiting when they stopped in a few days later as part of the last press tour, but she doesn’t actually let herself honest-to-god _wear_ it until the hiatus announcement becomes official. She kept feeling like someone was going to pull the rug out from under them in the very last moment, find some awful loophole, trick them somehow into touring one more time, but miraculously, it doesn’t happen, and they escape relatively unscathed. There’s no trick, no loophole, no tour. The hiatus comes, it’s real, and finally, _finally,_ Louis can breathe.

It’s not that she doesn't love One Direction. Being in the band with the other girls was—is—amazing, and she knows they'll do it all over again when the time is right, but they so _desperately_ need a break. To decompress just a bit, to disappear from the harsh glow of the constant limelight and live their lives as individual artists and people. They’re _young,_ really, but Louis has been starting to forget that, given the pace. It’s nonstop and brutal, an endless blur of high-rise hotel rooms, white lines, regurgitated half-lies, airport bars, sore throats, prying eyes, burning camera flashes. Louis wants to feel real again, wants to have more than a few days _off_ at a time. She wants to see Harry in private more than she sees her at work, on chat-show couches under layers of foundation melting off under the lights, not touching because years of holding back has made it second nature. She doesn’t want _not_ touching Harry to be second nature. That would fucking suck. 

Plus, she deserves to be not so goddamned put-together all the time. Being in the world’s biggest girlband means that she's _never_ seen without a flat stomach, a spray tan, contouring, eyelash extensions, the whole of her body inescapably toned and plucked and waxed so frequently that she genuinely doesn’t know what fucking colour her own pubes are. Louis wants to eat burgers and smoke weed and be twenty-three. She wants to wake up with Harry, to have them spend the whole day in bed fingering each other because they finally don’t have to wear goddamned acrylic nails for once. She wants to grow her pubes out. She wants to lounge around in a posh, red velvet, Hugh Hefner robe if she feels like it. 

So she does. 

—-

It’s weird at first, honestly. She has no experience being lazy, hasn't been in five long years, unless you count the stolen days off here and there when she and Harry would stay in bed, drink the minibar dry, and order room service, sleeping off their jetlag and marathoning their favourite shows. But that was different, though, because it was temporary. She knew in a few days it would be relentless again, that they’d have to fly to a new city for another string of performances or TV appearances or interviews or whatever. They could be lazy on those days because they were recovery days, repose before another sprint. 

But this…this is their _new life together._ Less of everything except time, which they have a lot more of now than they’ve ever had before, suddenly, and it’s surreal. She hardly knows what to do with it. There are days when Louis feels like she’s going crazy, but there are other days when she wants to cry in relief because if she’s sore, she can _actually skip the gym._ If she’s sick, she can _stay in bed and drink tea._ She can take care of herself, which she’s dreadfully out of practice doing. Still, there’s an odd, indescribable silence to this new existence, without the constant noise and bustle of a whole team around them, makeup artists and TV crews and roadies and tour runners and security. It’s a good silence but an eerie one. And she’s not _lonely,_ necessarily, but she’s used to crowded rooms. To the other girls. 

—-

They’re all dealing with it in different ways. 

LeeAnne has gotten really _zen,_ like, she’s taken up hiking and yoga and sends Louis ten hundred snaps of her _Avashana_ whatever that is, with dumb, white girl “Namaste” filters that Louis would find annoying if LeeAnne wasn't so sweet and genuine about it, and also…so much happier. She talks about mindfulness, and she's almost stopped drinking entirely, which is amazing because Louis certainly can’t boast the same, and they were all going pretty hard in that department by the end. LeeAnne, like, went to Tibet and got some Tibetan tattoo and can honest-to-god meditate now. It’s remarkable.

Nyla adopted a puppy, which turned into two puppies, which turned into three. She has this whole fucking menagerie of puppies now and is absolutely obsessed to the point where she made each of them their own Instagram accounts, not to mention the _joint_ account that she’s calling “PaddyPetPuppyFam.” Nyla asked Louis and Harry to watch them all one time while she took a weekend golf trip (she apparently would have taken the dogs, but one was too young for the proper shots, and she was adamant about not separating them, even for two days, she’s _so committed to this dog mom life),_ and they were idiots about it and said yes _._ Louis _loves_ dogs, but it was just _too much_ with three of them _._ She and Harry hardly slept. She wonders if Nyla ever does, and if not, if she cares. It doesn't seem to matter to her, as long as she’s with the Paddy Pet Puppy Fam. 

And Harry…Harry has become some sort of culinary genius or something. She has always wanted to cook, and back before they got internationally famous and the insanity became _doubly_ insane, she did sometimes, and she wasn’t half-bad. She made Louis pancakes and egg on toast and fajitas, and they’d eat sitting at the bar in their fancy north London flat, forever drunk on the newness of being popstars, of duping the whole world into thinking that they were just two gal-pals palling around, living together in gal-pally domestic bliss, when in reality, Louis’s jaw was perpetually tight because of all the time she spent eating Harry out. That was a sadly brief period in their lives, though, and as soon as they broke America, there was no time for cooking, just the money to have everything catered, all the time. Harry only got to cook around the holidays when they had a bit of time to visit their families, and Louis rarely saw her happier than that, skating around the kitchen floor in socks with her mum, drinking red wine, curls up in a messy bun, no makeup, cheeks flushed. They made ginger biscuits and Victoria sponge, Christmas puds that were so delicious, Louis would demand she make them year round, even though they both knew it was impossible. 

Until now, and Harry finally gets to live out her gourmet dreams. She buys a Vitamix blender and a set of posh knives that she keeps zipped up in a leather binder, and she’s almost always in the kitchen. Perpetually elbow-deep in something and covered in flour and grease, skidding over to Louis with a spoon and asking her if the passion fruit reduction glaze is too vinegary, if her curry needs more salt or tumeric or coriander. The house smells good and lived in for once, Louis’s eating _really well_ , and Harry seems super happy, even if whatever she’s trying out fails, and they're stuck with a burnt roast or overly mushy mushy peas. Louis’s pretty sure that it’s the act of cooking, the freedom and the creativity of it, that Harry’s thriving on, not so much the end result. 

Louis’s glad that the other girls have their new things. She _so_ is. She's just…not really sure that she’s found hers yet. She’s ansty, often working, even though she technically doesn’t have to, doesn’t _want to._ Harry cooks and LeeAnne meditates and Nyla updates PaddyPetPuppyFam and Louis sits out by the infinity pool in her red velvet robe, squinting at the Hollywood sign and jotting lyrics down on a receipt, writing music like it’s the only thing she knows how to do. It’s compulsive, working like this…just like eyeliner has become compulsive, or conditioner. Her body hair hasn’t even really started to grow back yet because she’s waxed it for so long that it’s, like, scared to come out or something. Maybe it never will. Maybe she’s stuck in these closed circuits, a holding pattern, like her years in One Direction shaped her so deeply that she’ll never spring into any new, authentic shape, a crunched-up water bottle that’s melted in the car, solidified. 

But maybe she just needs a little longer to settle into a new version of herself. She feels like the robe _helps,_ that it’s a symbol of sorts, the relaxed, luxurious future she envisioned when they started talking about the hiatus as a reality instead of a wistful pipe dream. If only she could _settle_ into it. Or believe that she deserved it or something. 

—-

The hiatus fucks her sleep schedule up, too. Before, Harry would always wake up first on their days off and make them espresso on the fancy machine that Nicky bought her, the whistle of steam sometimes rousing Louis from bed as the sound traveled up the echoey stairwell. Or, they’d wake up together and stay there for hours beneath the sheets, kissing each other with sleep-breath, legs twined, giggling over nothing. Louis loves Harry always, but something about the way her skin is so hot and smooth in the early mornings feels magical, like her fingertips can never get enough, and if she stops touching, whatever stolen time together they have will just evaporate. Like if she touches her enough with wide, greedy palms, she can mend every ache and wound from the past, plaster over them, patch Harry up. 

They have lots of those mornings when the hiatus first starts. Not so many that Louis gets used to them or takes them for granted, but enough that she stops feeling like she’s drowning if she doesn't soak up every second like a parched desert. 

But now, every once in awhile, she wakes up before Harry does, even when neither of them has had more than beer the night before. It’s crazy, when it first happens. The light filtering in through the blinds, spilling out onto their white cotton sheets. Harry snoring with her face pressed into the pillow, which has soft, gold-dust stains from her highlighter because neither of them have _really_ broken the habit of putting makeup on if they go out. Louis presses a few lazy kisses to Harry's shoulder, thinking that she’s probably moments from stirring awake herself, but she just whimpers in her sleep and presses closer, totally out. 

Louis hooks an arm around her narrow waist and tries to fall asleep again, but it just won’t come. She’s wide awake, her heart pounding steadily, the thud in her chest all that’s left of some already forgotten nightmare. Her early morning dreams tend to involve her fear of deadlines, of herculean tasks looming ahead, of a future stretching on indefinitely with no light at the end of the tunnel. It usually takes her a few moments to remember that they’re on a break, that they don’t have to be seen anywhere, that she doesn’t have to fast today to fit into her dress for whatever award show she’s expected to attend. The relief will set in slow and syrupy, like a high, and sometimes she can drift back into a light doze, but other times, she knows she can’t recover. This is just the only time that she can remember when Harry wasn’t already awake downstairs, ready to hand her an Americano or maybe some tea, kiss her temple, and say something absurd, like, _I saw a snake eating a rabbit on my run this morning, it was sick,_ or, _Do you ever wonder why they never made a horror movie about New Edinburgh?_

Harry’s right here, though, and Louis wants to stay with her, but she's just gonna sweat and be anxious and eventually wake her up, and she doesn't want to do that, so, carefully, quietly, she extricates herself, disentangling their legs. Then she puts on her robe and pads down the stairs to make herself a cuppa. 

An hour or so later, Harry eventually comes down the stairs, hair a wreck and eyes swollen, stunned that she slept so long, that she slept through Louis getting up at all. Louis sinks her hands wrist-deep in that wild wreck of curls and kisses her, thinks about how nice it is that they don’t have to spend every single available second together because there are seconds to spare for once. That it doesn't turn into a fight if one wakes up before the other, that there’s no battle over wasted time because there’s a whole morning, a whole afternoon, a whole weekend, a whole _week_. 

She's not sure that she’ll ever get used to having Harry like this. She’s not sure that she ever wants to. 

—-

Louis gains weight. Just a bit around her middle, below her bellybutton, nothing noticeable unless she’s naked or trying to fit into last year’s jeans, a soft roll that Harry loves to bite. Louis’s insanely proud of it at the same time it sort of freaks her out, not because she thinks that it makes her ugly or gross, but because it’s _different,_ a significant, observable change in her body that she wouldn’t have been able to indulge only a few months ago. She spends a lot of time staring at herself in the mirror, the patchy pubic hair that’s finally growing in (brown, it’s brown, a darker brown than the hair on her head but brown nonetheless), the new softness to her stomach, her thighs. She doesn't feel like a new person, or her _own_ person, not yet, but she feels like she’s regaining _some_ of the control that she was stripped of during her time in the band. 

Harry gets more tattoos and talks about cutting her hair. Maybe. She's not fully committed to the idea yet, even though Louis tells her over and over again that it would look amazing. Still, she talks about it a lot, especially at night when they’re sharing a bottle of wine. “I just want…I dunno, something dykey. That's popular right now, innit, so it wouldn’t be as big of a deal as m’making it? It wouldn’t out me?” 

“Who cares if it's popular or not,” Louis tells her, winding a curl around her finger, making it bounce. Harry’s already flushed cheeks get pinker. “Just do it. You’re not in One Direction anymore, love, you're a _tastemaker._ Just chop it all off and watch every girl do the same right after you. Fuck the suits, the whole lot of them,” she smirks. She’ll miss Harry’s hair, pulling on it, but she can still get a fist in something shorter. She likes a challenge anyway, and she loves the angle of Harry’s jaw, wants it exposed for kissing. “You’ll look beautiful.” 

“ _You_ look beautiful,” Harry retorts, undoing the sash of Louis’s robe and pressing her face to her stomach, licking up the new spidery white stretch mark by her hip that she’s obsessed with before sinking her teeth into the surrounding flesh. Louis yelps, grabs her by her hair, and gives a warning tug while it still exists.

“Gentle,” she tuts, thumb pressing into the back of Harry’s neck. “You can bite, but be gentle.” 

Harry moans, breath hot against Louis’s skin as she kisses lower, scouring her cheek on the (brown) triangle of hair trying to grow between her thighs. “Imagine if we were normal...like, normal girls, you with your sexy-as-fuck tummy and me with my short lesbian hair. And we could just, I dunno, be stared at because we’re gay and have tattoos, not because we’re popstars who’ve _let ourselves go.”_

Louis tries to imagine it, just for a moment, but it’s so _hard._ They aren’t normal girls, and they never will be, they’ll never be able to go to the beach together without the world scrutinizing not only their relationship but also their bodies. She shakes her head to chase it away because she doesn’t care about that, not right now. She has her girlfriend’s mouth open on her stomach, she hasn't counted calories in weeks, and her duller, natural roots are growing in under the _New Penny Auburn_ colour that Lou has been dyeing her hair for the last three years. She’s sleeping eight hours minimum every night, she hasn't been to a tanning bed since the last time she was on the telly, and she has a _stretch mark,_ an honest-to-god stretch mark. She lounges around in a velvet robe with old boxers on underneath it, loving the way it provokes Harry to slip her hands in whenever she can, her breath catching in her throat every time, like Louis’s a revelation that she’s only just had. 

“I like letting myself go with you, though,” she tells Harry, pulling her up for a kiss, pushing a knee up between her legs to press into her. Harry grinds down, and Louis can tell by the darkness in her eyes that she forgot whatever she was going to say. 

They kiss, and things that used to matter fade into the background, like headstones under overgrown brush. 

—-

Sex in the robe becomes a _thing._ Partially because of its symbolic weight, that they don't have to be perfect and plucked size twos all the time anymore, that they can be lazy and broken out and unshowered, and it’s _fine,_ the world won’t end _,_ they still have each other. Partially because Harry has made it clear that she thinks it’s _really_ hot. The symbolism likely infuses the hotness, and before long, it’s a full-blown _fetish_ object. If Louis has somewhere to be, but they don't have time to fuck, she knows that she shouldn't put the robe on. If she wants Harry drooling and messy fast, she knows that all she has to do is slip it over her shoulders and let it hang open teasingly, giving Harry glimpses of her tits, her bush, which isn’t _quite_ thick yet but is at least officially a real thing. 

Louis loves putting it on over her underwear with no bra, loves watching Harry squirm on the couch with her crossword puzzle and pretend to be coy until she gets tired of feigned aloofness and climbs over to push it off one of Louis’s shoulders, sucking her way down her throat, thumb pressed into the sharp line of her collarbone. “Can see your pubes on the sides of your thong...it barely fits you. S’got my mouth watering,” she growls while Louis lies back, fingers feather-light at her sides, teasing. 

“You want me to take it off then?” Louis asks, voice high and hoarse as she reaches over Harry to the coffee table for her cigarettes and lighter. Harry loves it when Louis ignores her and smokes like she couldn’t care less that she’s gagging for it, loves it when Louis plays at being in control. _Like to be your slut,_ she told her once when she was drunk and blushing, that final word coming out so low and heavy, like a scrape. She has never used that particular word again, as if it was too dirty and shameful to be reminded of in the daylight, but Louis remembers, always will. 

She lights up and blows a white billow of smoke over Harry’s shoulder as Harry drops to her knees and presses her cheek into the front of the flimsy thong in question. It’s a silky, white scrap of a thing, very not-Louis but a necessary evil for the skin-tight leggings and bodysuits and dresses they had to wear when they transformed from fun girls next door into older, glamorous women. Louis used to be able to get away with braces and cuffed jeans and chunky, ‘90s-style platform sandals, but sometime after they got big in America, she was told that she couldn’t “pull off” androgyny anymore, that she had to get extensions and wear more makeup than Zayn, even, who had been given the smoky eye in photo shoots from day one. Their handlers were desperate to make her seem straight, so her brand morphed into something more high-femme, and these dumb, barely-there thongs became a staple. It feels like a giant fuck you to wear them now, to bleed on them during her period, to have Harry’s hot cheek pressed to the triangle of pure white, the coarse brown curls framing the picture, lewd and filthy. 

“Hmmm,” Harry moans, hooking her index finger under the string of the thong up by Louis’s hip, petting the pale skin under it reverently. Louis’s usually golden from bronzer and tanning oil and those beds that fry you up, but she’s let it fade, and although her forearms are still dark, everything else is milkier, bruisable. “I don't know what I want,” Harry sighs eventually, kissing the crease of Louis’s thigh where the curls are getting matted down by her damp, laboured breath. “Too many things.” This usually means that she wants Louis to tell her what to do, to put her in her place. “Wanna worship you...every inch of you,” she rasps out after a moment, cheeks colouring even deeper, solidifying Louis’s suspicions.

“I’ll leave it on then,” Louis decides, bending one leg elegantly and flexing her toes before pressing them into Harry’s tattooed shoulder and pushing her back a bit so that she’s not so fucking _close._ It’s too much. She can’t order Harry around or tease her for very long if she gets past a certain point. Otherwise, she’ll just drag her in, ride her tongue, and come all over her face. It’s actually really _hard_ to play it cold. Louis sucks in a leisurely inhale and watches Harry rearrange herself between her parted knees obediently, sitting on her hands so that she won't get greedy and grab anything. When she exhales, Harry’s green eyes water in the twisting tendrils of smoke, so pretty, so wanting. “Takes so little to get you desperate for it, Hazza. Look at you, already hungry for my cunt,” Louis marvels quietly. 

Harry makes the most impatient mewling sound, shifting around on the floor and chewing her plush bottom lip. She doesn't even have to wear lipstick, her mouth is _always_ this insane pink colour, like the inside of a summer rose, wet and slick like something bleeding. It drives Louis crazy, so her eyes skate over to the rest of her body instead, as if that's any less distracting. Harry’s wearing silk boxers and one of Louis’s threadbare t-shirts with something screen-printed on it, the actual design indiscernible from years of fading. “Can I just have a little taste?” she asks, looking hopeful, and Louis smokes and giggles in response, fingers playing over the hem of her thong, which feels obscenely tiny and impractical amid so much hair. 

“No,” she says, pulling the triangle aside just to tease Harry with the sight of her dark curls, still sparse enough that they aren’t doing much to hide the pink folds underneath. Harry’s throat visibly ripples as she swallows. “Can look, though...is it pretty?” 

“Prettiest, so fucking pretty, wanna lick it,” Harry whines, wobbling on her knees. 

“Take this thing off,” Louis orders, plucking at the collar of the t-shirt with her toes. “Lemme see your nipples harden up for me.” 

Harry groans and obeys, cheeks burning as she wiggles out of the shirt, the soft white cotton a stark contrast to the red of her face before it ends up in a tiny pile on the floor. Harry shakes her hair out and looks up at Louis dutifully. 

Louis sighs at the sight of her half-naked on the floor. She’s just…she’s perfect, even now that she’s not plucking her eyebrows anymore and is a little broken out. _Especially_ now that she's not plucking her eyebrows anymore and is a little broken out. She's real and raw and for once not worried about how that sort of unpolished vulnerability looks.“So lovely,” Louis murmurs around her cigarette, voice softer than she means it to be, but whatever. She loves Harry, has loved Harry for so many years that it’s reflexive, like her heartbeat, at the same time it stuns her in moments like this, when she can watch that flush climbing down her throat and her breath become heightened. When she can _see_ how much she turns Harry on, even though Louis’s just sitting here on their couch in old underwear and sleep-messy hair with a velvet robe open over her tits, slouching so that her new stomach roll is prominent and unhidden. “You wanna touch?” Louis asks, and Harry practically sobs at the suggestion. 

“Please,” she begs.

“What do you want, baby? Can’t finger me yet, have to touch me somewhere else,” Louis whispers, petting over her own underwear again, smoothing the fabric, teasing herself through it. Harry huffs but listens, holding her hands out tentatively and alighting them to Louis’s thighs. 

“Here?” she asks, thumbing up the outsides, to her hip bones. “What about your stomach?” 

“Yeah, you can have that,” Louis tells her, putting her cigarette out in the crystal ashtray on the coffee table, making sure that her tits brush briefly against Harry's face as she leans in. Louis’s delighted by how obsessed with her stomach Harry is, she _always_ loved biting it and sucking marks into it before she went down on her, but now that Louis has gained a little weight, Harry’s even more enraptured, always grabbing her and squeezing her and telling her, _god, so fucking sexy, Lou, just wanna get on m’knees for you._ Louis _has_ her on her knees now, right where she wants her, right where she’s supposed to be, and the reality of it even after so many years makes her dizzy. 

Harry rubs her hands all over Louis, groaning and laying her head on her thigh, grinding helplessly in the air. “You like that I’m getting soft here?” Louis asks, grabbing Harry by the hair and dragging her closer, pressing her flushed face into the heaving plane of her stomach, between the swells of her ribcage. “Just for you?” she adds, though she really means _for me_ _and for you_.It’s made more accessible by the fact that Harry likes it so much, but that’s not why it’s important to Louis. Or rather, not the _only_ reason why. It’s about expanding past her parameters, exceeding her programming, proving that she has worth beyond the size of her waistband. Still, it’s a lot easier to believe that she’s beautiful even as her body changes when Harry’s right here, wanting her so badly, drooling for her. 

“God, fuck, yes, so perfect, you’re so perfect,” Harry slurs, opening her mouth on the swell of Louis’s soft tummy, the heat of her tongue sloppy and searing. 

_“Y_ ou like how it feels under your hands? Between your teeth?” Louis asks, and Harry’s face crumples, fingers squeezing reflexively. 

“You know I do,” she hisses. “Love you soft...love you real.” 

Heat is coiling tight and unbearable in Louis’s pelvis, and she’s going to cave and take Harry’s mouth soon if she keeps this up, so she shoves her off, settling into the couch cushions to watch her, the wild green flash of her eyes, her hair a wreck from being pulled. 

“Did that make you wet?” Louis asks, shifting her hand under her thong to feel how wet _she_ is, since she’s starting to feel it, the messy smear against the crotch of her panties as they shift around with her movement. She dips her fingers into herself where she’s slick and hot, and bites back a gasp. 

“V’been wet. When you walk around in that robe, m’always wet,” Harry admits, half-smug and half-pouty. 

“Yeah?” Louis grins, pretending to sound only mildly surprised, when in reality those words twist deep in her gut, make her stomach drop. “Show me, baby. Get your fingers in it and then put them right here so I can see what a mess you are,” Louis tells her, tapping her own thigh. 

“Please,” Harry whines, which hardly makes any sense, it’s just a helpless, hungry word slurred out of her swollen mouth. She pushes her hand under her waistband and fucks herself a bit, the shift of silk around her wrist so maddening that Louis’s mouth waters. Then she pulls out, index and middle fingers visibly shiny as she wipes them on Louis’s quadricep. It feels hot and wet, and there's a streak glistening on her skin when Harry pulls back, all pink and squirmy. 

“Look at you, so dirty,” Louis whispers. “Lick it up...tell me how it tastes.” 

Harry isn’t even coy or sexy about it. She’s desperate, messy, sucking herself from Louis’s thigh like it feels good just to have Louis’s skin in her mouth. “Not s’good as you,” she moans when she pulls away with a lewd smack, looking at Louis through her lashes, silently begging. “Please, Lou. Can I?” 

“Nope,” Louis says, pulling her thong aside and touching herself for real now, pushing her fingers into the slick and rubbing up over her swollen clit, getting it shiny and wet and coated so that Harry can’t watch without imagining exactly what it would feel like to suck it into her mouth. “Hng,” Louis gasps, moving her fingers in circles over herself, thrusting in stilted bucks. “You like m’bush, too, don't you? Always want your face buried there.” 

“Fucking love it,” Harry pants, hand back in her boxers even though Louis didn’t tell her to, rubbing herself while she watches Louis do the same, lips parted, so pretty and shiny as she licks them. She’s so pretty about it all that Louis doesn’t even correct her, tell her to quit. She loves when Harry can’t help herself. “Love that I can...smell you better when it’s grown out. And it’s soft, on my chin, I don’t get raw from the stubble.” 

Louis groans, feeling drunk. Touching herself is always nice, but when Harry watches, it feels magical, every sensation sharp and wild and heightened. “Thought you used to like it, the burn.” 

“I did…I do,” Harry admits, a line through her brow. “But this...it’s nice, too, s’nice because it’s real, not us making the best of whatever stupid shit we have to do because we’re supposed to. It’s so hot, Lou…watching you touch yourself. Love yourself.” 

Louis isn’t sure that she loves herself yet, what that even _means,_ how you even get there when your existence for five years was whittled down to being marketable, when women are only defined by how attractive they are, even if they’re good singers, good people, have something other than their bodies to offer. Growing wild like an unkempt garden feels exciting and a little scary, but it doesn’t feel like self-love. Not yet. She touches herself anyway, though, asking Harry, “You like when I feel good about myself? When I make myself feel good?” 

“Oh, god, yes,” Harry whimpers, pausing the motion of her hand to cup her mound, squeezing like she’s holding out, edging herself. “And I like…I liketo see you, how you _really_ are, you know...fuck...you look so good,” she babbles, voice softening into a needy gasp at the end as she sways closer. “So pink…lemme taste, _please,_ Lou. Please.” 

“Hmm,” Louis considers, voice noncommittal as she plays with herself, trailing her fingers down her slit before fucking them lazily in and out, everything wet and filthy, the _snick-snick_ of her sloppy cunt the only sound save for Harry’s breathless anticipation, which is a palpable, audible thing. “Not just yet...want you to watch. Want you to be dying for it, baby.” 

Harry whines, pressing her face into Louis’s thigh and nipping, hard enough to show that she’s frustrated but not hard enough to actually hurt. “Want it,” she whispers, and Louis lets out a moan, not sure if it’s because of the way Harry’s voice sounds so fucked out over those words, _want it,_ or if it just feels so _good_ to fuck herself with Harry’s breath close by, her hot, desperate exhalations. She rubs her clit hard, back arching and pushing herself closer to Harry. 

“You gonna eat me out when I tell you to? Make me come in that sweet, perfect mouth of yours?” she asks, feeling close even though she’s just _touching_ herself, burning up under the heat of Harry’s gaze. Her eyes are so green right now, a vibrant ring of it encircling the blown black of her pupils, and Louis feels like she’s drowning. 

“ _Yes_ , yes,” Harry promises, inching closer on her knees. “Please. Lemme...just wanna worship you, make you feel so fucking good.” 

And Louis reaches the familiar point at which she can’t tease anymore, can’t pretend. Can’t remember how she let it go on this long in the first place when Harry looks so fucking good, so angelic with her pink cheeks and cupid’s bow mouth. “Yeah, okay, baby, you've been good,” she praises, spreading her thighs and watching Harry’s whole face light up like it’s New Year’s Eve. “You can have it.” 

They don’t even bother to get Louis’s thong off: Harry’s eyes flutter closed as she whimpers and just dives in. The second her plush mouth affixes to Louis’s cunt, it’s like a circuit being completed, an electrical shock. Louis gasps, and Harry groans into her, lapping and kissing and sucking for a few greedy, uninterrupted moments before she pulls away to tie her hair back, fierce and messy. Louis loves watching Harry getting down to business, so dedicated to the cause, tidying herself up before she pitches forward with her mouth red and open and wet like something that Louis could sink into and never find her way out of, throat exposed now that her curls are tucked away. 

“Fuck, so good, baby, m’not gonna last,” Louis grunts, fucking Harry’s face as she pulls her hand away from herself to fist in the red velvet of her own robe, loving the soft crush of it between her fingers. 

Harry’s so good at this, loves it so fucking much, tongue flicking back and forth over Louis’s clit before she licks her way lower and fucks her way up inside, chin and cheeks shiny from how deep she is, how desperate. Her eyes are closed, lashes dark, reduced to salt-sticky half-moons against her skin, and Louis is _moved_ by the sight of her as she comes, the undiluted reality of Harry and all her imperfections, half-naked and raw as she presses Louis into the couch and sucks like sucking is breathing. 

“Fuck, s’too much, m’good,” Louis mumbles as her vision buzzes back, jamming her hand in between the swollen smear of Harry’s mouth and her own clit, everything spit-wet and slick. “Jesus, that was fast.” 

“I didn't get to taste it long enough,” Harry pouts, kissing Louis’s thighs, the back of her hand still shifting around between her legs as if the ritual of worship isn’t over yet. 

“I’ll feed it to you,” Louis promises, pulling Harry up by her hair, hands everywhere, grabbing at her greedily, making fists in hot, smooth skin. “Take your shorts off.” Harry does, hands clumsy and thighs sweet and trembling as she rolls the silk down them. Louis grabs her hips, squeezing the handfuls of sweetness below her waistline where no amount of diet or exercise has ever slimmed her. Their personal trainers used to _hate_ it, but Louis has always lived for these soft swells of flesh, loved to hold them, squeeze them, grab Harry by them, and drag her where she needed to be. Louis has always loved the bits of Harry that can’t be contained, her tits, big and soft and heavy now that she’s not always in push-ups, her areolas so dark and broad that she had to wear pasties under her white bras sometimes so they wouldn't show. Louis loves it all, the parts where she’s too long or too wide, her arms, which were always deemed too toned and muscular especially around the shoulders, now dappled in ink, in last night’s bite marks. Louis loves every inch of her, wants all of her under her palms, and, _fuck,_ the fact that she gets to _have it,_ now and forever, sometimes feels like the solitary reward for years of painstaking, faked perfection. “C’mere, baby,” she coaxes, guiding Harry down to her thigh so that she can grind, pelvis shifting, cunt hot and slick on Louis’s skin. “Wanna feel you.” 

Harry humps her as Louis gets a hand between her own thighs so that she can collect some of her wetness on her fingers and push them into Harry's mouth, everything hot and messy, making it impossible to know what’s saliva and what isn’t. Harry gets so wet and makes so much noise, and her mouth is so fucking _lush_ around Louis’s knuckles, sucking and drooling, spit and more spit as her hips snap and she moves faster and clumsier until she tenses and starts to shake, cunt pulsing against Louis’s skin.

Louis holds her through it and thinks, _we survived, we can breathe now._

And Harry _does_ breathe. In great, laboured gales, the whole of her trembling in the cage of Louis’s arms as they suck in long, laboured inhalations together. “You okay?” Louis asks gently, lips against Harry’s temple, kissing down to her cheek. “Made you wait a long time.” 

“M’good,” she sighs. Her hands trail all over Louis’s shoulders, her arms, her sides, where she manages to steal a squeeze. “ _You’re_ good. You always know what I need.” 

“S’because you’re made for me,” Louis sing-songs, closing her eyes because there’s static behind her lids. Harry makes her come so _hard,_ makes her lose her breath. 

“Love all of you,” Louis murmurs then, and she means it. Not just pre-hiatus Harry Styles and post-hiatus Harry Styles, everyone's sweetheart, villain of the year, the most coveted and loathed and envied woman in pop music. She also loves insecure, pre-haircut Harry. Messy, drunk, sad Harry. On her knees and begging Harry. Every Harry there is, both in front of the cameras and, for once, behind them. Where the light can’t touch. 

Louis nuzzles into her sweat-damp hair and thinks about how, when it’s gone, she’ll still love this girl in every way there is to love another person. She pulls her robe around and curls it over the both of them. _We deserve this,_ she thinks, imagining a future still unwritten, messy and human and unscripted. And maybe she doesn’t know where she’s going just yet, but at least she knows where she belongs. _We deserve this._


End file.
